Browsing Category

5 Things to Do To Increase Your Pinterest Traffic Again

Hey y’all. If you have been using Pinterest for a while now, you might know that Pinterest changes the way their platform looks almost every week. I’ve noticed this happening, especially in the last 6 months.

So today, I thought I’ll be talking a bit about what you can do when your Pinterest traffic isn’t working anymore. Here are five tips I’ve tried that helps me increase my Pinterest traffic every month!

Let’s talk about each one of them, shall we?

#1 Get more Pinterest traffic through manual pinning.

When I first started using Pinterest, I use automation tools like Boardbooster to automate most of my pinning. Automation is fun and autopilot-ing everything is every blogger and entrepreneur’s dream, but the truth is Pinterest likes it’s users online.

If everyone left their Pinterest account to automation and no one is on their platform, this won’t benefit their users at all.

Now does that mean you have to go back to the hamster wheel of pinning all day every day?

Not quite.

I use a combination of Tailwind, Boardbooster, and manual pinning to get my pins out there. I do notice that when I manually pin, there’s an increase in traffic.

So where do you find things to manually pin?

Here are a few ideas:

+ Pin from the “trending” list of pins. If you see your own pins there, that’s a good sign, repin that to give yourself a boost!
+ Follow 30-50 people in your niche whose pins you think your audience can benefit from

So if you feel like you’re not getting Pinterest traffic to your blog, take a minute to manually pin at least 5x a day. I do it about 10x/day now. I don’t like doing menial tasks like this, but it works!

#2 Get more traffic from Pinterest by creating new content.

Pinterest love and reward users for creating new content and this includes both new blog posts.

I usually create at least 1 pin for every blog post I write. Then when I have time, I batch create another set to A/B test which pins get the most traffic.

When you’re constantly putting out content, Pinterest knows because you have rich pins validated. Since Pinterest users are always looking for new ideas and inspiration for their new projects and plans, you want to consistently pump out content.

Now some bloggers claim that their traffic skyrockets once they stop putting out new content. What they don’t tell you is that it depends on what stage of blogging you’re at. If you have no audience at all and you’re not publishing, guess what?

You will continue to have no audience.

When I had my skincare blog, I was able to double my traffic every single month within the first 6 months. I blew it up to 30K pageviews per month because I published consistently. I wrote shorter blog posts, but published more frequently.

There is a time when publishing content isn’t as important anymore, but it’s definitely not when you have less than 50 blog posts. For my skincare blog, I realize that number was around 200-250 blog posts. It varies though.

So if you feel like your Pinterest traffic isn’t working anymore, try publishing every other day or every other two days and see what happens. Do it for two weeks and you’ll see some traffic peaks for sure!

#3 Increase your Pinterest traffic to your blog by creating a new set of pins.

I forget how many sets of pins I have created over the last year of so, but one of the easiest ways to increase traffic is to create different sets of pins to see what people resonate with.

Keeping the Pinterest audience in mind, most users are female. But there are male users too. I’d be honest with you, when I created my first few sets of pins, they were non-gender specific. I wear lots of neutral colors on a daily basis and when I created my pins, I didn’t have my audience in mind. I created it with what I like and resonate with more than my audience.

Boy, was that a mistake!

When you’re starting with Pinterest, forget having a branded palette. That’s important and having a cohesive look will make people in your niche remember you. I know a few people who consistently repins my pins, especially bloggers whose blogs I have guest blogged on.

But if you’re not getting on Pinterest because you’re waiting to build that perfect color scheme, I would forget that in the beginning. You don’t know what your audience resonates with yet, so why bother coming up with the color palettes and fonts?

Play around with different styles and see what people respond to. Eventually, you’ll begin to find a medium that works for both you and your audience.

Also, I say this because when you’re A/B testing your pins, it’s hard to stay on brand all the time. You have to go off brand a little to see what people click with.

The other benefit of having several different sets of pins with different headlines and designs is to fill up your boards quickly. Pinterest won’t punish you for having multiple pins that lead to the same blog post.

If your first set of pins didn’t take off, you can try creating another set of pins to increase your Pinterest traffic.

I use both Tailwind, Pinterest, and sometimes Google Analytics to check this. They complement each other very well.

Once you see which pins are doing well on which boards, you want to continue pinning that pin to that board every few days.

Not every pin will do well on every group board. What I’ve realized even deeper is that a popular pin can do super well on one group board, but does barely anything on another. Sometimes, it’s not a bad pin or blog post that you created, it’s simply a pin that’s not relevant to that group board.

For example, a pin about productivity will do much better on a board about “productivity tips” than “blogging tips” even if my pin and blog post is about productivity for bloggers.

Think of it this way, you have better chemistry with some friends than other friends because you two share more similarities.

When you check your analytics, you’ll know exactly which pin did well on which board. Google Analytics is very good for this. Grab the URL and continue repinning that pin.

#5 Add hashtags to increase your Pinterest traffic.

Gone are the days when hashtags aren’t a thing of Pinterest. Now Pinterest is a hybrid of a social network and search engine. Okay, maybe you don’t get social on Pinterest and comments are still considered spam. But you can finally use hashtags on Pinterest like you do on Twitter and Instagram!

So how can hashtags help you get more traffic? How is it different from search engine traffic?

So here’s the deal. When you log into Pinterest to search for “healthy foods for busy people”, you land on your Smart Feed. The Smart Feed will give you a mix of most popular and most current pins that are related to “healthy foods for busy people.”

Now, this might feel unfair to newbies because if you’re starting from scratch, then you don’t have a popular pin that gets ranked in the Smart Feed.

But with hashtags, Pinterest search results will ONLY show you the most result pins. That means you won’t be competing with other users who have tons of popular pins. All you have to do is add relevant hashtags to your pins. When you pin them, it will go automatically to the top of the feed. Take a look at the screenshot below.

(My hashtag is #bloggingfornewbies and most of the pins that show up on this feed are my pins)

So what does this mean?

If someone searches “#healthyfood”, they’ll see the most recent pins regardless of whether the pin was popular or not in the past.

Now that you have five ideas to increase your Pinterest traffic under your belt, what changes are you gonna make?

Until next time,

Judy

Want free access to our content library?

You'll get access to over 15+ pieces of cheat sheets, templates, and formulas that will help you conquer blogging!

Hi, I'm Judy! I've owned at least four blogs over the last 10 years, from general lifestyle to skincare to blogging. Combined with my experience in digital marketing tech startup, I give away all my blogging and productivity tips and secrets that will make bloggers and creative entrepreneurs successful online.

Hey, it's me Judy!

Blogging | Productivity Boss

Hi, I'm Judy! I've owned at least four blogs over the last 10 years, from general lifestyle to skincare to blogging. Combined with my experience in digital marketing tech startup, I give away blogging and productivity tips and tools that will make bloggers successful online.